


Until We Strike Soundings

by astralis



Category: Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 12:16:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5456240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astralis/pseuds/astralis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Nancy discovers that something very important was left behind in the move from Swallowdale to Wild Cat Island, she and Titty make the journey back to retrieve it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Until We Strike Soundings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hafl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hafl/gifts).



> I think most people who have read Swallows and Amazons will recognise the title but, just in case, it's from the chanty "Spanish Ladies".

“Where’s Nancy?” Susan asked. “Still at the harbour? Oh, bother. Titty, run and tell her grub’s up, will you?”

The smell of buttered eggs and woodsmoke was too good to miss, so Titty breathed deep to fill herself with it, and then ran through the well-worn path to the harbour. It was becoming overgrown again in places and she reminded herself, as she ran, of how she had trimmed it last year when she was alone on the island. Perhaps she ought to do it again.

Titty stopped where the trees met the beach. The captain of the _Amazon_ was bent over the gunwale of her boat, her hands fumbling around the centreboard case, and muttering to herself in a most un-piratical fashion. 

The watcher in the trees scuffed her feet in the undergrowth, so as to make sure Nancy noticed her. She had been rather noisy, running like that, and Nancy ought to have heard her coming from miles away.

“Bother,” said Nancy, standing upright, her cheeks burning as though she had been caught at something naughty. “Hullo, able-seaman. Breakfast?”

“Yes,” Titty said, and added, hesitantly, “is _Amazon_ all right?” She was not at all sure if this was the sort of question to be asked of a pirate. She thought rather not.

“Can’t find the ship’s knife,” Nancy admitted. She would not be able to hide this catastrophe forever. “And it was me had it last too, not Peg.” Nancy thrust her hands into her pockets and came away from _Amazon_. “Well, let’s go have our grub. But don’t tell Peg yet, will you?”

Titty bit her lip. She would not, normally, have volunteered the information - it was private ship’s business, after all - but to be told not to made her stomach feel odd. “Where did you have it last?” she asked, following along behind as Nancy led the way back to camp.

“Swallowdale, I think. Before the race. I suppose I’ll have to form an expeditionary force and take Peggy back to find it.”

“Peggy and Susan were going to tidy the store tent today. Susan says Captain Flint and the natives brought so much food that they don’t know what we have and haven’t got.”

“You’re right,” Nancy said, remembering. “Bother!”

Titty saw the shape of the tents through the trees, and smelt Susan’s fire. She thought the eggs might be rather dried by now. “I could come,” she said, a little hesitant. Nancy mightn’t want an able seaman tagging along. “I’ll just get in the way of Susan and Peggy, and I don’t mind not going fishing with John and Roger.” She thought she’d rather like to see Swallowdale again, empty as it had been the day they found it.

“Well,” said Nancy, “if John and Susan don’t mind.”

John and Susan didn’t mind, but Susan did ask “Whatever for?” when Titty said that Nancy had proposed a two-man expeditionary force to return to Swallowdale.

“To find something,” Titty answered, feeling wretched.

“It’s the ship’s knife,” said Nancy. Telling John and Susan was nothing like telling Peggy, although she would have to do that too, whether she found the knife or not. “You know how it is.”

Titty, looking at John and Susan, saw that they did know. Even the best of all natives would not be happy to find that such a thing as a knife had been mislaid, and Titty counted Mrs Blackett as very nearly among the best.

“You’d better take some pemmican,” Susan said, “and the last of that bread. We can have the buns with dinner. I suppose you won’t wait for some boiled eggs?”

Nancy shook her head. “Better not.”

“And some apples, then,” Susan said. “And some of that cake.”

It was a very well-provisioned expeditionary force that set out in the _Amazon_ bound for Horseshoe Cove and Swallowdale. Titty sat in the bows, watching the marks where the leading lights had hung last year as Nancy sculled over the stern. She had to say ‘port’ once and ‘starboard’ twice as _Amazon_ inched her way out of the harbour and into the open sea. Nancy shipped her oars and ran flag and sail up the mast with lightning speed. “Well done the able-seaman,” she said.

The able-seaman did not feel that she had done much at all. She sat where she was, out of the way, wedged into the bows in what, in _Swallow_ , would be Roger’s spot, and looked up at the skull and crossbones fluttering in the wind as _Amazon_ sped across the lake. Last year, _Amazon_ had been her prize, and she had spent the night anchored in her, alone. It would always be the first time she had been alone in a boat and the first time she had slept in one.

Titty patted _Amazon_ ’s gunwale secretly and then turned her attention to the world around her. The lake was just as she had remembered it. All through that long year of school and games and holidays in the small town in the south where they lived she had treasured those memories of the lake, smooth and clear in the early morning; of the mountains that towered around it, brown with dried grass in the heat of the sun; of Rio’s narrow streets and the grey stone buildings that wound down towards the lake; and of the island itself. She had remembered waking to the smell of Susan’s fire and how it felt to kneel on the rocks with the kettle, carefully drawing water from below the surface. She had remembered the way the stars stretched out overhead, seemingly vaster and more brilliant than a town sky, with the North Star brightest of all. And she had remembered how it felt to race before the wind in _Swallow_ , with the breeze on her cheeks and the little flag she had made flying proud above her head. Sometimes it had been so real to her to that town-and-school Titty felt like a costume that lake-Titty had climbed into with her blue tunic and white blouse.

They had barely had time to believe they were back at the lake when it had all gone wrong. 

Titty looked ahead. They were coming up on Horseshoe Cove now and there, just under the water, lay the Pike Rock. It lay there, biding its time, a dark and menacing shadow, a trap for unwary or unlucky sailors.

Titty knew exactly how it felt when a small boat careened into it.

She gripped _Amazon_ ’s gunwale and looked up, up at the sun and the skull and crossbones, fluttering exactly as they should be. Nancy knew her lake and she knew her boat. It wasn’t disloyal to say that she knew better than John, because Nancy had been sailing this lake and this boat for years.

There would be no crash on the Pike Rock today, Titty told herself firmly.

It was very hard to breathe, anyway, and she ought to have eaten less breakfast. Her stomach was full and churning and for a long, horrible minute she was so dizzy she thought she might just topple over the bows and fall into the lake.

And then they were past the Pike Rock, safe, and gliding into Horseshoe Cove as the captain of the _Amazon_ , in those moments her only crew, loosed the halyards and lowered the sail.

Able-seaman Titty came to and hastily, with trembling fingers, helped Nancy to lash the sail to the boom as they ground to a gentle halt on the beach.

“How was that?” Nancy said, as though nothing had happened. She was not talking to Titty so much as she was talking to herself and her ship. “Couldn’t have had a better run. ‘Course, we’ll have to tack all the way home unless the wind changes - barbecued billygoats! Able-seaman, you’re shaking!”

She was. With no way to hide it, Titty forced herself to remember that the mate of the _Amazon_ was afraid of thunder and her older sister was used to such things. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “Really I will.”

“Of course you will,” said Nancy, briskly. “What we need is tea. I’m sure that’s what Susan would do. And anyway, we ought to be properly provisioned before we set out. Within ourselves, I mean.”

“I’m dreadfully sorry,” Titty said. They ought to be moving on, covering the miles to Swallowdale in the quest for the ship’s knife. What if their delay caused someone else to find and claim it? “Perhaps we ought just to go on.”

For a moment, Nancy hesitated, and Titty felt lower than the worms. Nancy felt the same way she did, she just knew it: they should be pressing onwards. But Titty was Susan’s sister, and Nancy thought she should do what Susan would in this situation. If it had been Peggy, Nancy would have told her to buck up and remember she was a mate of the _Amazon_ because that was what helped more than anything else, but one couldn’t talk like that to the Swallows and Titty _was_ rather pale.

The fireplace they had made that first day was still there. The able-seaman, grateful to be away from Nancy’s gaze, scoured the treeline for firewood, which the captain set about making into a roaring fire that was, perhaps, a little larger than it needed to be. “Oh well,” Nancy said, watching the flames lick the sides of the kettle with a rather critical eye, “that kettle was already pretty black anyway.”

They drank their tea, scalding hot and without any milk but with plenty of sugar. Titty sat on an old log and kicked her toes on the ground, back on solid ground and feeling that breathing came a little easier now.

After all, it had been rather silly to be afraid.

“All set, able-seaman?” asked Nancy. “Then douse the fire and let’s set out. We’ve a long day’s journey ahead of us.” 

“Where are we going?” Titty asked, pouring water on the fire. A great cloud of choking steam rose into her face. She knew that Nancy would answer the question properly. John and Susan would have simply said ‘Swallowdale’, and Roger would have looked to her to tell him how to answer, but Nancy always had a plan.

Nancy didn’t, or at least not the great excitement she would have liked. Her imagination had failed her. The route to Swallowdale had almost become a highway from the constant travel back and forth, and Titty was an excellent companion in imagination - perhaps even better than Peggy - but there was only one of her. “We’re back from months at sea, returning to one of our old haunts in search of the treasure left behind by the ship’s last captain. He knew he was being watched by enemies, so he hid the treasure well.” It was not a story of which the captain of a ship like _Amazon_ could be proud.

“Are they watching us?” Titty asked, falling into line behind the captain as they left Horseshoe Cove and the lake. If the story disappointed her she didn’t show it. Perhaps when a journey was accompanied by the joyous trickle and rush of the beck and the smell of the woods, it was hard to be disappointed. 

“Of course. Why, at any moment a whole band of them could set upon us.” 

“They might be following us already.”

“Eyes sharp, able-seaman. Prepare to lurk or defend yourself if required.”

“Aye-aye, sir,” Titty said firmly. She felt rather better now, as though her moment of weakness had been less than it really was. She set her shoulders and marched on, eyes open for avenging pirates or a ship’s knife.

Nancy kept up a brisk pace. They had wasted enough of the holidays on pleasing the GA for Mother’s sake, and she meant to miss as little time as possible on what might well be a fool’s errand. Holidays were for sailing, and Nancy ached to take _Amazon_ right up the lake in convoy with _Swallow_ , to land at some bay where they’d never set foot before. She wasn’t sure that there were any, but she meant to find out. A great voyage of discovery it would be, taking provisions for a whole day of adventure and perhaps ending with a battle between pirates and explorers for possession of the bay. 

She said nothing of this to Titty. Having failed on the matter of today’s adventure she wanted to make sure she had every fine detail of her next plan worked out.

Titty found herself missing Roger as she walked. Without him to explain things to there were rather less enemies abroad than she might have expected and the constant thrill of excitement was muted. “Who are the enemies?” she asked, her voice low lest Nancy spot any of them lurking in the shadows. Why, perhaps that was the most important part of the story: who were the enemies, and what was the treasure?

“What was that, able-seaman?” Nancy had not been expecting a voice from behind her.

“The enemies,” Titty repeated, remembering a book she had once read. “Were they always enemies? Perhaps they’re mutineers, and they believe the ship’s treasure is theirs. They helped to find it, after all.”

They stopped then, in order to cross the road the same way Titty and Roger had done the day they discovered Swallowdale, going under instead of over it. When they had come out from under the bridge and were sitting shaded behind a tree, drying damp feet with their handkerchiefs, Nancy, having had time to consider it, decided that perhaps the captain of the ship and the leader of the mutineers had been brothers. 

“Perhaps they were sisters,” Titty said, putting her shoes on without having properly dried her feet.

Nancy stopped what she was doing. “Well,” she said, after a moment, “whyever not?”

They set off again, the captain and the able-seaman. Titty, always aware of the possibility that the knife might just be lying, dropped, on the ground, followed along behind the beacon that was Nancy’s red cap, exercising her brains on the story of the two pirate sisters. It was easy enough to picture how they had been, captain and mate of a great pirate ship, sailing the seven seas with an ever-increasing store of treasure in the hold until it became so large it had to be taken ashore.

“Why, though?” she asked, thinking out loud. “Why did they fall out?”

 _That_ was the real story.

The woods were thinning out now, giving way to the moorland that hid Swallowdale. “I don’t know,” Nancy said, stopping short for a moment. Usually the battle was thing, but now, like Titty, she was stuck on that point. Nancy could picture herself having a falling-out with Peggy such that they could be considered enemies about as much as she could picture herself standing on the moon.

“They mustn’t have been very nice to start with, then,” Titty said, as they began walking again. “Or maybe one of them wanted to stop sailing and live on shore and the other one didn’t.” She thought of how John and Roger knew they would be in the Navy, like Father, and live on destroyers like Father did. She thought she might like to live at sea too and go wherever the wind took her. And she thought that Susan might like a houseboat, but she probably wouldn’t like the other things. But if they had been the pirates in the story they would have let Susan have her share and they would have come to visit her on her houseboat whenever they were passing by. 

Nancy would rather not give too much thought to what had happened beforehand. All that mattered was the story they were living. “Perhaps they don’t even know themselves,” she said. That seemed to be the way of things with some of the other sisters at the small school she and Peggy attended.

“I expect so.” Titty walked on, still unsatisfied with the story. "Perhaps one of them was scared," she said, without meaning to. 

"One of the pirates?"

"Yes." Titty thought she might not like to go on, but it wasn't proper to leave a mountain half climbed or a story half told. She was glad, all the same, that Nancy was in front of her and could not see her face. "If one of them had wanted to go on an adventure - perhaps they were to round Cape Horn - and one thought it was dangerous, and she couldn't do it - and the other one didn't understand." Titty's eyes stung. She was surrounded by people who were perfectly understanding about such things as shipwrecks, and who might not think it was a good thing to do magic with candle-grease imagines but would not laugh at her behind for doing so, but all the same, she suddenly felt as though she and the scared pirate - a lesser character than Peter Duck, being without name or history - were one and the same. After all, you couldn't account for the things you might be afraid of until you knew they existed, and surely it would be terribly hard to be going about your life as a pirate until you were suddenly struck dumb with terror.

She looked up into the leaves of the trees above them and blinked until her vision was clear again.

They climbed up the waterfall in silence, the footholds and handholds as easy now as walking along a road, and Swallowdale opened out before them. Faded patches of grass marked where the tents had been and the little dam stood, intact, in the beck. 

It had been their valley, and in a way it still was, and always would be.

Titty, who after all had had a half share in the discovery of Swallowdale, led the way down in the valley. “Where do you think it’ll be?” she asked.

“Peter Duck’s cave, I expect. That’s where I had it last.”

“Captain Flint and Mary Swainson packed up,” Titty said, remembering. “They might not have seen it. Especially not if it was Mary.”

They drew aside the heather and went in. They had forgotten, in the rush to get underway, to pack a torch, so Titty was obliged to hold the heather up and with the daylight coming through the door and the hole in the roof Nancy was able to see just enough in order to lay hands on the knife that sat, still, on the shelf where she had left it after using it on a tin of pemmican. “Well,” she said. “We found the treasure, anyway.” She opened it and inspected each of its blades, the tin-opener and the corkscrew, and then put them away and tucked it safely back into her knapsack. “I was an awful idiot to give Peg grief for leaving it lying around last year, before we met you. Likely as anything it fell out of her pocket.”

“I expect she doesn’t mind,” Titty said, although she rather felt that if had been her, she _would_ have minded.

Nancy expected so too. “I’ll make it up to her,” she said, sitting down beside the old fireplace. It already felt like an old fireplace, and not like one they had only used two days ago. “Wouldn’t like to become like those pirate sisters." Nancy might have preferred it if Titty had left the pirates' tale as it was. She could no more leave Peggy behind than she could leave her right arm, and the pirate who would do such a dastardly thing was not a pirate to be admired. For the first time in her life, she found herself siding with the mutineers. "Well, let’s make a fire and have our dinner, anyway.”

They did not really need a fire, having had their tea in Horseshoe Cove, but it seemed like the thing to do anyway, in order to bring a little life back to the still valley. They had the pemmican and their bread-and-butter and the apples and the cake, and then they washed it all down with a second round of tea. It was a silent meal, with each member of the party dwelling on her own thoughts.

“Well,” said Nancy, breaking the silence, “it’s a blessing the GA has gone.”

Titty wondered if she ought to tell Nancy about the candle-grease image of the great-aunt. Perhaps not. She thought that Nancy might prefer to make candle-grease images of great-aunts that did not really exist, and she had already been rather ridiculous over the matter of the Pike Rock. The story - her own story - of the pirate sisters sat a little like a cautionary tale in her mind.

“I only minded for Mother’s sake,” said Nancy, fiercely, “It wasn’t fair for her to be nasty to Mother because of us. But of course Peg gets upset on her own behalf as well, especially when the GA starts saying in front of her that she hopes that Margaret isn’t still afraid of storms. Why shouldn’t Peg be afraid of storms?” Nancy thrust a stick into the dying fire, scattering the embers.

Titty sat very still and thought that this was a question that she was not required to answer.

Nancy was breaking up a rather decent sized bit of wood, red-hot from the fire, into pieces so that they would cool faster, and she was using perhaps more force than was really required. “"Father died during a storm, you see," she said, rather as if she didn't care. But Titty knew she did.

“Oh,” said Titty.

Roger had asked, after they left the lake last summer, what had happened to Mr Blackett. Titty, John and Susan had all wondered themselves, but none of them had liked to ask. Mother had said that Mrs Jackson had told her that he had had the influenza one winter, and had died of it when his girls were small, and the four Swallows had all been very quiet. Titty looked at Peter Duck’s cave, so as not to look at Nancy who was glaring into what had once been a fire, and thought of how Peggy, little and scared, might have thought it was the storm that had killed her father, and how even though she knew now that it wasn’t so she might not be able to stop being scared. Titty remembered the Pike Rock, glinting under the water, and the way the fear of another shipwreck had gripped her heart. How dreadful it would be to feel that way every time there was a storm.

Titty found herself angry at the great-aunt all over again. 

Nancy, for her part, was feeling rather foolish. She hadn't meant to say anything about Peggy and storms, but in her anger at the great-aunt she had said a little more than she had intended. Peggy could be rather tiresome during thunderstorms but a pirate's secret was worth all the treasure in the world and more. Still, she told herself firmly, she had not given Peg away entirely, and whatever conclusions Titty drew would be her own.

Nancy stood up. With the lost knife in her knapsack and a good meal in her stomach she wanted to get back to Wild Cat Island and and the simple, straightforward adventure that came with boats. “Come on, able-seaman. Let’s make sure this fire’s out. I think it’s time we got home.”


End file.
